How to Train Your Dragon 2 Trivia
Trivia *''How to Train Your Dragon'' is the fourth DreamWorks Animation film to become a franchise, after Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda. *The first How to Train Your Dragon film to be distributed by Twentieth Century Fox, since the end of DreamWorks Animation's deal with Paramount Pictures in 2012. *''How to Train Your Dragon 2'' is DreamWorks Animation's first longest film, with a running time of 1 hour and 41 minutes. *Chris Sanders, co-writer and co-director of How to Train Your Dragon and Dean DeBlois' collaborator since Lilo & Stitch, will not return to write and direct the sequel, due to his involvement with The Croods; although, he will only executive-produce the film. *The music in the film's teaser trailer was "Beyond the Clouds", written and conducted by Audiomachine. *When offered the sequel, Dean DeBlois accepted it on condition he can turn it into a trilogy. For the sequel, he intends to revisit the films of his youth, with Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) having the pivotal inspiration for the film. "What I loved especially about Empire is that it expanded Star Wars in every direction: emotionally, its scope, characters, fun. It felt like an embellishment and that's the goal." Dean DeBlois admitted in an interview at the 67th Annual Cannes Film Festival about the improper use of making animated motion picture sequels. "I think too often animation sequels seem unnecessary. They turn the same five or six characters into another adventure." Upon accepting the task to write and direct the sequel, DeBlois went to DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and pitched a completely different approach: "I told him I was interested if he would consider the idea of a trilogy, because then the first film could serve as a first act in a larger narrative on the way to an overall coming-of-age story where Hiccup would become a wise Viking chief, and we could end on roughly the same concept as Cressida Cowell's book, explaining why the dragons disappeared." With the decision to set the sequel five years after the events, it would work best for the story and DeBlois' ambition. "That way, we could avoid the problem that is often faced by sequels where you start with a character who had all his problems seemingly solved in the first film."**The first DreamWorks Animation film to use its new animation and lighting software through the entire production. Programs named "Premo" and "Torch" will allow much more "subtlety, in facial animation, the sense of fat, jiggle, loose skin, the sensation of skin moving over muscle instead of masses moving together." Dean DeBlois said, "I think the film looks a lot better than the first. In addition, our film is the first to showcase a whole new generation of software that has been developed at DreamWorks called Apollo. In past versions, if you wanted to do something as simple as arch an eyebrow, you would have to select the eyebrow from a menu and input what degree of arch you would want, enter that numerical amount, and wait for that to render," whereas the new system allows them to work in a much more intuitive way, using a stylus and touch-sensitive Cyntiq monitor to grab and manipulate the characters, which now render in real-time. "It allows animators to go back to working with their hands." **Dean DeBlois asked Cate Blanchett to play the role of Valka during the 2011 awards season where How to Train Your Dragon (2010) was being campaigned for Academy Award recognition. "I told her that I had written the part for her in How To Train Your Dragon 2. And she smiled, saying that the (original) movie was "a big hit in her household with her three boys," said DeBlois. "I told her about the character, and I could see it blossoming in her mind." Category:Trivia Category:How to Train Your Dragon Category:How to Train Your Dragon 2